


> Set Variable Name

by Caracalliope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, Identity Issues, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Names, potential/implied Gender Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24360916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caracalliope/pseuds/Caracalliope
Summary: You have exactly one letter from your mother. It's crumpled and almost (not entirely) illegible, and you use it as both a roadmap and a promise.
Relationships: Roxy's Mom | Alpha Rose Lalonde & Roxy Lalonde
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	> Set Variable Name

My Roxy,

Whenever I try to record a voice message addressed to you, the tape (or Dave's precious Appletop) dissolves into writhing black sludge. I am not allowed to leave you my voice, so here is a crude approximation on paper - my best medium.I leave you to make the obvious joke. Or, if you have progressed with the Game at all at this point, the other obvious joke.

Once she learns to summon majyyk enyrjjies, even a mediocre enchantress can force lightning to strike the same place twice. I have the scorched shed to prove this. But it is far less common for a mediocre writer to invent more than one good name for a protagonist, and the proof to that lies in _Complacency_.

Calmasis came to me with an unprecedented hiss of inspiration. There is a quiet dignity to the sound and shape of their name, and it sets the character apart from the fumbling Zazzerpan and his cohort of the learned. From conception, Calmasis was my favorite and they always will be. Everyone else is subject to my unhobbled authorial cruelty, to the methodical mockery I have woven into their core. Calmasis remains elusive, above and beyond all that. I never thought I’d have another genuinely good name for a character.

Roxy, the name, came to me in a flash of Light and blazing darkness. It's not safe to look closer. I don't know your face or the way you style your hair. I don't know what makes you happy. You might think, while you're young, that it's hard to love someone when you know nothing about who they will become. But I think that's one of the ways motherhood remolds us - with our back pressed against the wall, we have no option but to embrace the uncertain, and to love it to the best of our mediocre ability.

(Whenever I try to adopt the cadence of a parent, I become an insufferable blowhard. But this letter likely won't ever reach you, and if it does, I will not be there to witness your distaste. So you will forgive me, I imagine, for refusing to edit it.)

Your name is my greatest literary achievement. Dear Calmasis can't rival it, and neither can any other word or violin chord. I think about it before I wake up, ready to face the day’s headachesA mother will do whatever is best for her children., and today I considered it all through the glib emotional void of being interviewed. Will you like your name, Roxy? Do you enjoy the way it clashes with Lalonde? Is it bright enough, coy enough to belong to you? Is it too much of both?

There may be a moment when the name feels unbearably girlish, and you will put it aside for something with more syllables. Romance or law enforcement may ask thee to doff thy name. You might just get bored with it. Boredom is how we got to be Lalondes, by the way - it is less an invention of mine, and more a dart that was thrown from teenage ennui and landed in Normandy.

If you grow out of the name, you will still be mine, as much as you want to be. Like the house and all my other gifts, use it as much as it is of use to you. But if you keep it, I know that someone in your life will say it with reverence and pride. When that happens, you should know that that is how I pronounce it. I say it often when I’m alone.

If I pin this letter to a wall, or stuff it in a bottle with a ribbon just for you, the black sludge problem will return. But perhaps the creative entropy I rely on in my professional life can provide us with a loophole. This letter isn’t finished - I have much more to say and a name of my own to sign. If I leave it now in a book and forget about it,I’ve been practicing the art of oblivion ;). whoever is using this house might stumble upon it one day. What they may do with it, I cannot foresee.


End file.
